Yesterday I mentioned that there is an experience bar and you can level up in the upcoming Adventure Patch to Minecraft. I got a hankerin’ that these combat updates and new abilities are going to be *the* reason why you wanna level up at all. But, and this is pure speculation on my part, but at this time I don’t know what else you’d earn from leveling. Something to help you survive mo’ better seems about right, thus I came to this conclusion ^_^

Critical Hits and Sprinting

Critical hits meaning more damage, higher burst and all that. I don’t know if he’s going the simple route of “2x damage” or the math-bending “1.5x damage” method. I’m hoping the two times option because the brain processes multiples faster than fractions. Mine does anyway. It does ask the question though… eventually you’ll get the diamond sword and that nearly one-shots everything out right now. So a crit of that would be beyond over kill… unless new mobs have a lotta more health. Ah, ha! Things to keep in mind folks, gotta work those angles -_^ Also, this ties into the perma death/lost items change he has planned. Once you get that diamond sword with high crit chances you know more than anything you don’t want to lose it, making the fear of impending death even more harrowing.

And you thought the “Ssss…” of a Creeper was bad now.

As for sprinting, Notch seems to still be iterating this, but for now it’s a temporary speed boost that might also change our vantage point during the process:

So I added sprinting, just to try it out. Double tap forward to start running, like the fast jump move thing from Unreal, but it only works forwards, like sprinting in most modern FPS games. It felt slow and weird until I added a FOV change as well, but now it’s fun and addictive. I feel like there needs to be a drawback to doing it, though, or you’ll feel like you’re wasting time when you’re not sprinting. (source)

Field of view change. Hmm. Third person? Increase the peripheral range? Or just juxtapose the landscape during the process? We’ll need more details before we can find out for sure.

Hold-to-Charge Bow Mechanic Added

In a tweet just about two weeks ago, Notch mentioned that bows will have a charging option. You can hold down the fire button to add more ‘ummph’ to your shots. I’m assuming higher the change, higher the range and likely increasing the damage as well. They also mentioned two achievements related to bows for 1.8, one more realistic than the other. One is to shoot the Moon (might just be a joke, but it sounds just goofy enough for him to actually add) and the other is to kill a skeleton at 50 meters, which Notch added “will not be easy.”

Blocking Attacks

Instead of just hopping in-and-out of combat like a one-legged pirate, attempting to dodge all attacks by merely being a mixture of ESP and nimbality, why not block stuff with your weapon? (Technically, it’d be a parry, but it’s Notch so I’ll let the semantics slip this once :P Hey, tank long enough in WoW and you’ll know the difference!) Notch mentioned that doing so would be useless as there is no visual cue that the mob is about to attack, so he’ll add new animations as well! Double bonus!

Maybe if we’re lucky we can stop arrows like a medieval Jedi! Fueled entirely on bacon and rigorously trained by punching trees all day under the guidance of a hairy, old, and cloak-clad Creeper that can move blocks with his mind! …But just being able to avoid damaging attacks while staying in melee range would be cool by itself, too.

So that’s about it on the combat front as far as we know right now. There are a few more things that could tie into this of course, such as the food healing over time, new types of food via chicken, steak, and melons/pumpkins being farmable, as well as the new NPC villages and Strongholds. How fun will those places be to clear out! Just be careful you don’t sprint off into a ravine, of course ^_^ That would give you just enough time to curse to your heart’s content before turning to mush at the bottom and losing all those precious items and combat abilities!

-Edit-

Was watching Jeb’s conference and he actually mentioned the idea of doing double damage to mobs if you attack them and they fall down a block or so. Like if you punch them not exactly off a cliff, but down a hill, they’ll take even more falling damage or something. Which is nifty too!

There is quite a few more things, but these are the biggies and most likely to come out in my opinion. Feel free to check out the whole list so far right here if ya like!